A SUGGESTION. 269 



This peerless family takes kindly to captiv- 

 ity, as has been amply proved by their enduring 

 the voyage and living two years in the unfavor- 

 able climate of England, as well as by spend- 

 ing at least nine years in an aviary in China, 

 and there is no reason why we in America 

 should not have opportunity to admire them 

 and study their habits from life. Would that 

 some of our young explorers could be induced 

 to turn from the ice-fields of the Poles, and the 

 death-swamps of the Tropics, to seek these in- 

 imitable birds in the mountains and woods of 

 the Papuan Islands — not to shoot for our mu- 

 seum shelves, but to study their manners and 

 customs, and above all to introduce them into 

 American aviaries, that a new and absorbing 

 chapter might be added to our Natural Histo- 

 ries, and the Bird of Paradise cease to be the 

 Bird of Mystery. 



